Blessings Home: Personalized Communication

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Personalized Communication is an Example of Successful Creativity in Caretaking. When discussing the organization and operations of Blessings Home, staff members emphasize the importance of their core values. Two of these fundamental values are innovation and excellence. While volunteering and observing, I have noticed that these values are strongly supported through the creativity staff members use when caring for medically fragile children. When trying to get to the root of why so much effort is put into communication at Blessings Home, I found this interview to be particularly insightful. A support staff member who is also currently a senior at a local university said, “Talking to them and not talking above them or around them is, I think, …show more content…

Depending on the reasoning behind communication in an interaction, the style changes. Communication to achieve a goal largely depends on responsiveness to signals denoting choice or desire. Staff members in interviews addressed several styles they have seen in communicating in these instances, such as facial expression, sign language, and body language. Each staff member, when discussing these strategies, noted that all of these strategies require attention and flexibility as every child handles communication differently and the clarity behind their responses can vary. Once a staff member explained that, “If somebody’s crying and upset and I try one thing and that doesn’t stop them, I gotta keep trying. I am so in awe of our staff because our staff just never stops trying to find a way. Like they just keep going, ‘No she doesn’t like that’.” I have had the opportunity to participate in many of these interactions while volunteering and can attest to the difficulty at times in understanding the message that the child is sending me. However, the staff members have provided many insights that I have found to be very effective when applied. In one instance, during my volunteer shift, John (RN) had to briefly step out of the room to get medications prepared for two of the patients. There were other nurses …show more content…

The components of performance that I found to be particularly effective were autonomy, labeling, identity, safety, and communication. Using these principles in patient-provider interactions fosters a sense of community, respect, and compassion. At first look, Blessings Home may appear to be what Goffman calls a total institution. They are an institution in which, for short periods, patients have all aspects of their lives conducted within the home. However, that portion of Goffman’s definition is where the similarities end. Blessings Home does not treat each child as being the same or force a consistent, pre-planned activity schedule on the patient. Instead, they create a community in which individuality is celebrated. Importantly, they do this while maintaining highly organized and successful medical and social care. To do all of these things simultaneously, the Blessings Home caretakers maintain a strong, team-oriented performance rooted in the pre-work they complete with the patients’ families. Goffman explains that in total institutions, there is characteristically an exclusion of the patient from the decision-making process, even in terms of their own fate. According to him, this is largely effective because of the perceived consequence of punishment if the patient doesn’t cooperate. It is important to note that this oftentimes is

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